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Many of you have seen our first “Under Wraps”video and infographic from last summer:

Both became popular very quickly, as many women had been requesting clarification of the differences between shapers and what exactly goes on underneath wraps, for some time! However, for women with little-to-no hair, these were not accurate representations of how our Essential Tools might work for them. Most Shapers give quite a different look when a bun or pony tail isn’t present underneath and until now, we didn’t have a proper visual guide to illustrate this.

Without further ado, may we present both our newest infographic and “Under Wraps” tutorial, showcasing all four Wrapunzel shapers, when worn over very short hair!

Share share share!! Help others shine from the inside out!

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This is for the hair covering community, that has supported Rachel over the last few years during her daughter’s battle with cancer, but this is also for everyone. Please share this as far and wide as you can, to hasten the coming of Moshiach and fill the void that this holy woman has left in this world. May we storm the heavens with our efforts, bring nachat to our creator and may we know no more sorrow.

Share share share!! Help others shine from the inside out!

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Wrapunzel was in the Jewish Press! All in all this is totally what Wrapunzel is all about! Thank you so much for writing such a gorgeous article! (Please note that Andrea gave the interview in January even though the article was just published.) The easiest way to view these pages is to click on the page you want to view, and then zoom in on the article. Here are the links to the two pages of the article:

Throwing on a tichel was once considered a comfortable, at-home way to cover hair—but many frum women would’ve been mortified to wear one in public. But wow—times have changed! There’s been an explosion of style in the tichel world, and what was once considered a shmatteh best worn for washing floors has turned into high style headdresses that confer an air of royalty and elegance.

Yehudith Levy (aka Judith de Paris), who sells stylish French and Israeli head coverings, says the French influx into Eretz Yisrael has catapulted the tichel to new heights in headwear. She says with a smile, “You have many Sephardic women who follow Chacham Ovadia’s shitah to cover hair with a hat or headscarf, but since they’re French, they want to do it with style! They’ve created many beautiful innovations in head coverings.” She herself agreed to wear only hats and scarves when she married her Tunisian-born husband, the rabbi of a Sephardic congregation.

But you don’t have to be Sephardic—or even Jewish!—to appreciate the possibilities of tichel-wearing, or “wrapping,” as Andrea Grinberg and Rivka Malka Perlman like to call it. These two friends first connected online through their shared loved of creative tichel wearing. Andrea, a professional cello performer and teacher, as well as an inspired baalas teshuva, had started a blog with the charming name “Wrapunzel,” in which she documents her own discoveries and inventions with tichels and invites other women to share theirs.

Andrea’s blog attracted an unexpectedly broad following. There are women who post their stories on the blog (Andrea dubs them “Wrap Stars”); some of them aren’t even Jewish. There are fundamentalist Christians enamored of the idea of modesty, and Muslim women who cover for religious reasons. A Jewish clergywoman who started her own blog and posted a “Wrap Star” entry now covers her hair all the time, professing a longstanding fascination with hair covering.

As Andrea Malka began blogging, Rivka Malka had been busy publishing her own blog designed for kiruv. At the time she was the director of the kiruv organization WOW in Maryland, which reaches out to young professionals. When she considered adding a video to the site, as a means of reaching a wider audience, a friend advised her to post a clip about how she wears her headscarves. “That sounded funny to me, but he said, ‘If you do what you love, and what you’re good at, people will respond to it.’ He was right—I did clips on several different topics, but it was the hair covering clip that was the most popular!

“That taught me a lesson about the power of a mitzvah. Sometimes we want to make mitzvahs sound more neutral because we think they’ll be more palatable to the unaffiliated, but Torah speaks for itself. If you share from a place of raw sincerity and authenticity, people will respond.”

Today Andrea and Rivka Malka demonstrate tichel techniques and sell them through a site called Wrapunzel. I meet them in a Flatbush home a couple of hours before a sale; with characteristic warmth, they usher me through the controlled chaos to a couch to chat, as Rivka Malka’s husband and a couple of her children haul in boxes and pile tichels on tables. Tonight Andrea’s face is framed in a navy tichel layered with a patterned sari scarf (made of sewn strips of sari fabrics) and topped with a row of pearls; Rivka Malka is wearing striking layers of teal and rust. Both women have delicate features that shine under these “crowns,” radiating wholesomeness and purity.

So how do two Ashkenazic women become icons of tichel wearing—and the creators of a whole new style? In Andrea’s case, she started her married life in Eretz Yisrael, where wigs are less de rigueur than they are chutz l’aretz. When she moved to Chicago so that her husband could pursue a masters degree (he’s also a musician, a violinist), she was told, “In Chicago, you’re going to have to wear a sheitel.” So she went out and bought an inexpensive one, but never wore it in the end. “I wasn’t against wigs, and I’m not usually the type to stick out in a crowd. But the tichel was just me; I loved wearing them,” she says.

Rivka Malka, nee Klatzko, grew up in a warm, open frum home in Cleveland; like her brother Rabbi Bentzion Klatzko, she exudes enthusiasm for Judaism tempered by sensitivity and practicality. She says she always had a “a yen for more color,” surely a reflection of her bright, open personality. What she didn’t want for herself were the discreet wigs and dark clothing she saw a lot of in the yeshivish circles of her childhood. “It’s my inner hippie, my artsy side,” she says cheerfully. “Anyone who knows me knows I hate black! I need lots of color.”

Like Andrea, she bought a sheitel after she got married, although she mostly wore berets and scarves. “My husband told me, ‘You can wear anything on your head but a snood, I don’t like snoods!’” she laughs. “My mother-in-law always wore tichels and looked great in them.” Over the years she developed the tichel look she wanted, and began wearing headscarves exclusively (it’s now been 20 years). “For awhile I was wearing my wig only to weddings,” she says. “Then one evening I went to a wedding, and there was a woman wearing a beautiful tichel. I thought, hey, if she can do it, I can too! After that I retired the wig for good.” Before long she began buying tichels in bulk and selling them in tzedaka sales.

Hashgachah pratis pushed things along when Andrea’s husband got a scholarship to continue his studies in Baltimore—right near Rivka Malka’s neighborhood! It seemed absolutely bashert for two women who already felt like soul sisters. The two couples ended up living just a few houses away from each other, and davening in the same shul. Now they were able to give each other chizuk and exchange blogging ideas in person, in each other’s kitchens and living rooms.

They soon realized they needed to help the women reading their blogs put their ideas into practice. “We were busy teaching people techniques to tie tichels, but we also needed to give them the tools—the access to beautiful tichels,” Rivka Malka says. “So we put our heads together and came up with the idea to open a business.” Their husbands were supportive—both became involved helping—and the Wrapunzel store opened this past January in Andrea’s cello studio.

Perhaps Wrapunzel’s most novel move was to take a booth at the International Head Wrapping Festival in Dearborn, MI, where they were the only Jewish merchants among 45 booths of Muslim vendors and over 500 participants. Their booth was so most popular at the show—so much so that when the Detroit Free Press wrote up the event, they chose to spotlight Wrapunzel. “They caught our positive spirit,” Rivka Malka says.

Andrea and Rivka Malka appeal because they’re fresh and enthusiastic. For them, wearing a tichel is a means of taking tznius to the next level, elevating the mitzvah to an art form and making a very public kiddush Hashem. Both of them dress in stylish, sometimes funky clothing and bring an equally creative touch to headscarves, often combining two or three to fashion braids, twists, rosettes and woven effects. They combine all manner of colors, patterns and textures to create wearable head art—and complete the effect with brooches, strands of pearls or lace, or sequined headbands. “Sometimes people question if it’s tznius to wear a very striking head covering,” Andrea says. “But there’s a difference between beauty and physical allure, between framing the face and distracting from it with hair.”

Women frequently tell them, “I don’t wear a tichel because I don’t have the right face for it.” But Andrea and Rivka Malka pooh-pooh that idea. “Everyone can wear tichels,” Rivka Malka says firmly. “It’s a matter of find the right style and colors for your face and personality. Most people need a little height, some more to the back, others more on top. You might want to cover or not cover your ears, depending on their size and your hairline.”

“Many women feel so beautiful when their face is highlighted by a gorgeous tichel,” Andrea puts in. “We recently had a hearing-impaired woman let us use her for a demo at a show; she’d been wearing a severe black scarf. We chose a lavender and gray tichel that looked great on her, and the audience yelled to her, ‘You look amazing!’ She actually started crying from happiness.”

The time has flown by, and now women are starting to come through the door for tonight’s sale. Andrea and Rivka Malka have a talent for connecting with their clientele, many of them repeat customers and online contacts; they liberally dispense hugs and compliments. There’s a strong, almost palpable sense of sisterhood among these women who share the passion for “wrapping.”

By now everything has been put in place; the dining room table is piled high with a rainbow of pretty scarves. There’s more eye candy on added folding tables, and the room becomes crowded with chattering women fingering the scarves and oohing over new styles. There are glittery scarves studded with sequins or shot with sparkling threads; filmy ruffled scarves; shimmery stretch scarves; solid and brocade-like pashminas; scarves ornamented with appliques. “It’s fun to shop for tichels, because unlike clothing, it’s not about your size!” Andrea says with a grin. It’s also a lot easier to throw a scarf over your head to appraise the color than it is to try on a whole outfit (they’ve strategically placed mirrors all around).

Doesn’t it take a lot of time to tie on so many layers? “You get faster at it,” Andrea says. “I take about five minutes in the morning to wrap my hair. But putting on a wig and styling it also takes time.” A tichel also has the advantage of never needing to be schlepped to a sheitelmacher for upkeep, and they’re economical: “You could buy every tichel in this room for the price of a custom sheitel,” Rivka Malka points out.

The Wrapunzel ladies sit down their clients and show them various ways of tying the tichels, offering suggestions on how to match colors and fabrics and ornament with a strand of pearls or jeweled headband. I run into my friend Devora, who’s shopping for something to wear to the wedding of a close friend. Rivka Malka expertly outfits her with a gold pashmina scarf layered with cream lace and a jeweled headband—tres elegant! The enthusiasm is contagious; Andrea and Rivka Malka clearly love interacting with other women every bit as much as they love gorgeous headscarves, and the room buzzes with the fun of grown-up women playing dress-up.

“Our mitzvahs of tznius and marriage are so beautiful—we consider them a joy, a treasure,” Rivka Malka says. “We’re trying to be an ohr l’goyim; when you go out, you represent Judaism to the world. Even when you’re not teaching, you’re teaching by example.”

Andrea’s well placed to speak; she wears her tichels even when she plays her cello at professional concerts. It’s not surprising she chooses a musical metaphor to sum up her outlook: “We want to sing a song to Hashem with our mitzvahs,” she says.

***Sidebar: Wrapunzel tips on Wrapping a Tichel

1) First, Andrea says, breathe! Everyone feels awkward at first.

2) Buy a wig grip headband. This will keep your tichel from sliding back—even the silky-slippery ones. If you don’t have one, you can do what Rivka Malka did in the days before wig grips were available: cut the legs off a pair of pantyhose and use the top as a non-slip liner.

3) You might want to buy a volumizer, a padded cotton cap that goes under the tichel and gives a fuller look (as if you have scads of thick beautiful hair underneath!).

4) Add a second and/or third tichel to the first.

5) Find one style that you like and looks good on you. Now practice, practice until you can tie it quickly and well.

If you’re new here, we are so excited to get to know you. Each woman brings her own special spark and makes this community vibrant and miraculous. This is the place to swap tichel wrapping ideas, answer questions, get inspired, and safely share with each other, no matter what background you’re from!It is a place of love, understanding, and connection.

The details are what make any home special, and the Wrapunzel Fangroup is no exception.Your moderators want to make sure you have the most positive experience here possible. These rules have been created with much care and deliberation from to our collective knowledge and past experiences. We’re very serious about your safety and making sure that no one takes advantage of the wonderful atmosphere here.

Wrapunzel Fangroup Guidelines:

By requesting to join this group, you affirm that you have read and understand these guidelines. If there are any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us!

These rules are all based on the very important bottom line that this group is a community fostered and inspired by creative output of the ladies from Wrapunzel. The rules are here to maintain the special, supportive, and safe atmosphere of the group. Anyone wanting to join or already belonging to this group with any agenda that is not about personal growth and spiritual health (whether it be pushing your religious beliefs on others, money/business oriented motivations, political interests, or just general negativity, etc.) should please not join this group. The following rules should help clarify this:

1. If you have any questions about whether or not it is appropriate to post something, clear it with a moderator before posting.Do not post anything starting with something like, “Not sure if this is okay to post here but… “ or “Moderators please let me know if this can be approved…” or “I know this is off topic but…” Any questionable posts need to begin with “[Moderator Approved]”, and the way to get this done is by asking a moderator before posting. Please follow this rule so other ladies know to do the same.See guidelines below for kinds of posts that may need to go through a moderator before posting, but when in doubt, ask a mod first!

2. This Group is for women only. Please message a moderator if you have any questions about this (such as shared profiles with partners, gender identity etc.) and we will discuss with you how to best participate in the group.If you are joining this group and have high privacy settings on your profile, please write us a short note telling us a little about yourself. We will PM you when you request to join the group, so make sure that you check your ‘message requests’ folder for messages from moderators!

3. Please keep your posts and comments on topic (aka related to tichels!) and within the framework of what Wrapunzel is all about: a life affirming community that seeks to bring women together from all walks of life, bonding through the shared love of head wrapping.This group is a safe haven for many; a place to come and experience joy, acceptance, and positivity.We love sharing our personal journeys and stories of growth, and have built beautiful movements through this sort of sharing on here. Please keep in mind that personal posts such as these must be thought out before posting in order to keep our group an open and beautiful space for all; this is not a place for posting prayer requests, excess negativity, or simply venting. Prayer requests must go through a moderator first.However, this is a wonderful place to come to for advice on any struggles you might be having with hair covering and how it affects one’s life.Treat everyone on here with the respect that you would hope to be treated with, and please do your part in maintaining the positive atmosphere of this group for everyone.Sharing stories of overcoming struggles and dealing with personal growth challenges is highly encouraged, and the support system here is out of this world. However, we need to always be aware of the power of our words, and be considerate of all the members that come here to experience the positivity and light that the Wrapunzel community has to offer!

4. Wrapunzel respects that each of us live different lives. We come together from vastly different backgrounds and the bridges that we have built are what makes this place so miraculous. While you may make mention of your place of worship, lifestyle choice, holiday etc., please do not overshare or attempt to influence others through religious teachings, other doctrines or misrepresentation either on the group wall or in private messages. Note that any mention or allusion to missionary work/proselytization is strictly prohibited If you witness anything of this sort happening, please notify a moderator immediately. Since this rule is somewhat of a grey area, it is always best to ask before posting if there is a doubt.

5. With this in mind, please keep in mind that while Wrapunzel is a Jewish website run by Jewish ladies, the community of Wrapunzel comes from all over the world (and is only 1/3 Jewish!)Ladies on here cover because they’re from different religions, for health and hereditary reasons, for fashion, for feminism, and much more!When you post, please be considerate of the reality that the ladies here come from different backgrounds and try to define any terms that you use.

6. You may not use this group to solicit members for personal/outside ventures through posting or private messages unless you have been granted express permission from a moderator. This includes sharing events, writing papers, trading of merchandise, personal videos that are not about hair wrapping, your own blog, looking for volunteers for a cause, etc. If you have a something of this nature that you think would benefit the Wrapunzel community and would like to promote and share, you must clear it with a moderator before being allowed to post.

7. We encourage sharing creative ideas but please note posting affiliate sources (aka stores, online or otherwise) or links is not allowed due to past incidents related to #8. While we understand the innocence in saying “Got this scarf at 50% off at X big box store! Woohoo!” we sadly can’t allow this sort of sharing, because there is a huge grey area between this sort of sharing and advertising for said store. Unfortunately we have had incidents in the past of businesses exploiting members of this group and we need to keep that sort of thing away from here.If you want to know where someone got her outfit, please message her privately. You must approach the person, and privately – she may not approach you. (Posting your own personal tichel tying tutorials, as long as not related to another store, is totally fine!)

8. This community is fostered by Wrapunzel and the obvious effort that goes into building this type of trust and connection. It is unfair to the members of this group to exploit this closeness by using it as a business network rather than a social one. Therefore, if you are a vendor that sells tichels or scarves/accessories, please do not join this group. Using this forum (including the blog/site/page and privately messaging members) as a business network is strictly prohibited. If you sell tichels, no matter how few, you may not post your products on here, however subtly you are showcasing them. You may not use this group as a business network in any way.If you witness anything of this sort happening, please flag the post and notify a moderator immediately.

9. Political comments do not have a place on this group. World events can be discussed elsewhere.Please message a moderator if you have a question about whether or not a post may be political.Here we focus only on our own personal journeys. For further clarification, please see the footnote at the end of the list.

10. We all love and admire each other’s incredible photos and posts! However, many members of this group treat this group as a private safe haven. If you would like to share someone’s photo/video/writing on any forum other than this one, you must ask and be granted this person’s permission before doing so. On the same note, we must remind you that while this group is a ‘closed’ forum, please use your common sense when sharing.

11. Please do not arrange meet ups, swaps, etc. using this group. We are serious about your safety and cannot be accountable for any of the mishaps that may happen (use your imagination – a lot can go wrong!) If you become friends with someone that you meet in this group, you do so at your own risk. Please inform us of any negative incidents so we can deal with them and protect our community as much as possible. While we try to speak to every member that we let in here, we cannot vouch for everyone’s integrity. Please use common sense and discretion and remember that while this is a private group and we do everything we can to keep it safe, this is also the internet, and anyone can take a screenshot. Please use your ‘street smarts’ when sharing personal information; we do everything we can to protect our members, but we would rather not have to deal with incidents after the fact, if possible.

12. If your post was removed from the group, please review these guidelines to see why it was removed. If there is any confusion still, contact a moderator and we will let you know why it was removed. If you see a post on the group that is offensive and/or goes against the group guidelines, contact a moderator right away. Do not take matters into your own hands by privately messaging the offending party or engaging in negative speech on the post. Simply tag a moderator (or even better, tag more than one!) in the post and send us a private message as well. You can (and should) also report the post so we can remove it quickly; this is easily done by clicking the little grey arrow at the top right side of the post.

Your moderators are peace loving, hard working individuals and everything that we do on here is with the benefit this group in mind. In a large and diverse group like this, we sometimes have to make difficult decisions, but rest assured that we discuss these issues at length, always do our absolute best, and work together continuously to make this group the miraculous and safe place that it is. Please note that being rude to and/or blocking a moderator on facebook will result in your removal from the group. All major decisions are discussed between us and we are in communication constantly in order to make this group better and better for you!

Thank you for following these guidelines and being such a wonderful contributor!We’re looking forward to spending may more gratitude filled days together with you and some incredible tichels!

Love, your moderators ♥

Footnote regarding #9:

Your moderators would like you to know that we care about each and every member of our community. And so, in an attempt to keep the fan group from becoming political and exclusionary to those with differing beliefs on the politics going on in the Middle-East and other strife-ridden areas, we are respectfully asking that if you choose to wrap in national colors, that you do not include political messages, opinions, or hashtags in your post.

Hashtags or references to specific political situations, terrorism, patriotism for any country, etc. will result in your post being removed. While it may seem harsh, this policy protects the group from extremism as well as making it a space safe from arguments, hate speech, and conflict – unlike so many other media outlets that we have to deal with.

Please do not construe this as support for or nonsupport for any political stance, but merely a way to keep the peace in the Fangroup and to keep it a safe place for all our members. We have worked very hard to make this group a place where women come to get away from all the negativity in the world, a safe haven, and we do not want world events brought in here.

Hello lovelies!! It’s a cold and sunny day here in Baltimore, and it’s the perfect weather for a double pashmina wrap! Enter the Shira Tails! This has been a well circulated wrap tutorial, but sometimes ladies have a little trouble looking at it because we took it randomly when meeting Shira at one of our shows! So here is my layered version!

I am totally loving this wrap… it’s been too long since I’ve broken out my favourite Blue and Black Midnight Lakeshore Bliss scarf (one day I’ll tell y’all the story behind this tichel… it’s pretty incredible!) I paired it with a black pashmina and our (surprise!) new lace sash! It’s not online yet but you can bet they will go crazy when we have them up for you! This is just a taste 😛

And just because I felt like it, I decided to experiment with adding our new Celtic Braid headband… WOA! It just took this tichel from cozy fancy to wedding worthy! I only wore it long enough to snap these photos, because it was just a little too fancy for teaching music to kidlets, but I know I’ll be wearing it again soon when the occasion arrives!

Wishing you all a beautiful day, filled with lots of light and connection! May you get to appreciate something new, and share it with someone else! It’s such a pleasure to know you all ❤
Love, Andrea

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Wrapunzel Wrapunzel, Wrap up your hair!

Welcome to the Wrapunzelution Blog! My name is Andrea Grinberg, and I am psyched that you've found your way here! Take a look around, especially at the top bar and catagories below: tutorials, videos, FAQs, recommendations, and women from all over the world being featured on this site! Ask your most pressing hair covering questions - nothing is beyond the ladies of Wrapunzel! Oh, and did you know that we now have a store at wrapunzel.com? How cool! Be in touch and add your voice to the conversation. Can't wait to hear from you!
Lots of love!